Why living with an addict causes Betrayal Trauma (and how to find recovery)

Do I believe that people living with addicts and alcoholics get post traumatic stress disorder? And immediately I said, absolutely, yes, I do. And here's what that looks like, and here's why. And I thought I would sort of elaborate that on that just a little bit more in this video. So we're going to talk all about that trauma. Why your emotions are so out of control, why you're so angry and sad and hostile, and why you just feel like your emotions are like a tornado inside that you cannot even control sometimes. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, master addiction counselor, and you're watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel dedicated especially to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can heal yourself, help a loved one, and get your life back on track. If that sounds like something you might need to do, consider subscribing, and I'll make sure you have all the tools and resources to make that happen. So living with an addict really is what's considered a betrayal trauma. What does that mean? It's being traumatized by a huge, giant betrayal in your life. And not just like a little one, like a big one to the point that it's. It's almost like you question yourself. And the best way to think of it, think about what it might feel like if you don't know. Hopefully you don't know what it might feel like if you had a spouse and you found out they had been having enough on you. And the whole thing is just turns your world upside down because it's like, not only is that going on, just the whole act of it is horrible, but a lot of the trauma comes from how is that going on the whole time? And I didn't know all the months or years or weeks that they've been making me feel like I was crazy and I knew something was up. And I would ask about these things and they would just be like, you're crazy, and they make you feel crazy. All that gaslighting. You know my videos on gaslighting? You've seen those? If you haven't, check them out, because that's definitely pertinent here. And it's just the lies, the deceit, the making you feel like you're crazy, that is as problematic as the act itself, because it really just keeps you constantly dysregulated. And what really happens is it activates the fight or flight part of your brain. And because it's been going on for so long, you might even be to the point where it's like you're always in that active fight or flight response because your brain interprets that just like any other threat, like a physical threat, like you're being attacked by a bear, like a car was fixing to smash into you. And so it's got that back sort of primitive survival part of your brain activated, trying to keep you hypervigilant, hyper alert, watching everything, trying to sort of look out for danger because you're in that protection mode, that survival mode. And because of that, that's all ran by emotions. And when that part of your brain is activated, I mean really activated, then those emotions really override this front part of your brain, which is the thinking part of your brain. And that's why you feel like you can't control your emotions sometimes. That's why you feel so angry. I mean, you're angry, you're threatened, your whole life is threatened. If this is your husband and you found out that all this has been going on this long, or maybe you've known it, you can't stop it, and you've got kids and you may have to leave and the finances are all a mess. Clearly you can see how traumatizing and scary and angry you are for them putting you in this place. Because now you're being backed into a corner where you either have to let go of your loved one, which is not what you want to do, because it's going to destroy your family, break your heart in a way that you may not ever get put back together, that's what it feels like, or stay living with someone who's clearly deceitful, who's manipulating you, who makes you feel like you're crazy, who you can't trust. You turn your back on for one second and they're sneaking around, they're doing something. So you're angry because they've put you in this really bad position. They put you in a position, they ask you for money, and if you give it to them, you feel horrible and shameful and guilty. And you don't watch all Amber's videos. And you're like, oh, that's bad. You know, you've been going to Alan. You're like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. So you feel guilty for doing it. If you don't do it, then you feel scared. You feel scared. Well, what are they going to do to go out there and get that money instead? You know, they may do something awful or horrible and they may put themselves in more danger, or if you don't give it to them, they're threatening you, and they're belligerent, and you're just exhausted, and you don't deal with it. You're angry, you're upset, you are being threatened. And it may be hard to identify that you may not see it exactly the same as you might see another kind of physical threat. But it. It really is because it's something that threatens your entire life that you have built. So it's really important to understand that and to take it very seriously. Now, here's the thing. And you guys know I talk about this all the time. I talk about how we always see family systems and how if, as a counselor, I only ever saw the addicted person, which I usually do see the addicted person. In our office, we have these two counselors who typically see the family members more often. We switch up sometimes, but we have who sees the spouses a lot, and then we have Campbell who sees the parents a lot, and they're fantastic. And the thing of it is, if I just saw the addict or the alcoholic, of course they're minimizing everything they do. Even if they're, like, acknowledging, okay, I did some drugs, you know, like, I spent some money or something, they're definitely downplaying it. They're definitely minimizing it. But I'll tell you what they are telling us. They're telling us how crazy you're acting. And then if we see you or we interact with you, we're probably going to notice some of those things that they're saying about you, that your emotions are out of control, that you're compulsively checking, that you're nagging, that you're screaming, that you're yelling, that you're threatening. And so if you go to, like, a regular marriage counselor and you got this problem going on, or you go to another kind of therapist or your kid or your spouse or whoever is going to another therapist and they're telling all this, and then when they interact with you, it's almost like being validated, and they don't really understand this issue, they're not going to understand why you're acting that way. And I hate to tell you this, like, this sounds really terrible, but if they. They don't really understand what's going on, they're probably thinking, well, dang, no wonder he drank, or no wonder she did this, or whatever it was, because, like, that feeling, they are out of control. And so sometimes people will tell me in my office, they'll be like, man, my wife's crazy. I'm like, yeah, she probably is that's because you made her that way, you know, and so it's important for you to see somebody who understands that. Because before you can start working on all of these strategies, like all the strategies that Amber teaches you, I'm guilty of this. I'm like, do this, do this, do this. The first thing you gotta do is figure out how to sort of soothe this back part of your brain that is screaming at you like non stop 24 7, that's always under threat, that's constantly checking, that can't let the guard down. Just completely hyper vigilant, not sleeping, all that stuff, you gotta calm that down. Because when that is on fire, your thinking brain cannot work. Like it's getting. It's using up all energy, all blood flow, whatever you wanna call it. And the first thing you gotta do to do your strategic decision making. All the stuff that I teach you is you gotta access and activate your front thinking brain. And I know that seems like, what are you talking about brain? Nerdy stuff, but it's actually, that is what's going on. So you need to develop some skills or some ways and techniques to help regulate some of that emotion, to help calm you so that you can think and make decisions and use a lot of what you've learned in order to decide what your next steps gonna be. You know, because you're gonna be driving down the road and you're just gonna see this one street or this one place and it's gonna remind you of, you know, maybe that's where such and such happened, or maybe that's where they're going to get their drugs and you're just gonna be activated. You're gonna be in that fight or flight response. And in those moments it is gonna be extremely hard to make good decisions. So there are some things that you can do to try to get your front brain to activate and your emotional. And a lot of those techniques are kind of. They're like what I might call like grounding techniques. And so one of the simplest, easiest things to do is do what we call a box box breathing or a four count breath where it's like in through your nose, like in 2, 3, 4, out 2, 3, 4. And it's sort of slowing down your breathing and slowing down your heart rate. Because when you get in that fight or flight response, your breathing speeds up. What you don't want to do is do that, that like slow, I mean that like really quick hyperventilating kind of breathing. Because that's just gonna tell your brain that you really are under threat, and it's gonna really ramp up. So you want to slow your breathing down, which will slow your heart rate down. It'll get some oxygen to that front part of that brain up there. And now maybe you can make some good decisions. Other things you can do is like maybe have like a fire drill technique in your back pocket. Like call someone who you know can just talk you through a situation, who can help you be objective, or call someone who can just get you to think about something else so that that emotional part can simmer. Your thinking part can check in. You know, I usually say, don't make decisions when you're really emotional. You know, don't make the decision that you're done. You're throwing the person out in the middle of a big fight. Because when you do that, you're making it out of emotion, and emotion is temporary. And when the emotion goes away, you're going to undo that decision. And so you want to delay decision making when you know that you're sort of to that point where you're not thinking clearly. You want to do some kind of grounding technique to sort of get that emotion to calm, get in the front part of your, the thinking part of your brain so you can decide what to do next. You can count backwards by threes. You can do anything that makes you have to think. It's gonna sort of shift you into that front thinking part of your brain and lower that intensity in that emotion. The other thing that I would tell you is everything inside your brain is going to be so hyper vigilant. It's going to be making you be so aware all the time. You're gonna want to obsess. You're gonna want to go into the rabbit hole. That's what I call it, like dark rabbit hole. And you're gonna be driving down the road, you'll start thinking about it and you're gonna start obsessing about it. And then it's gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger in your brain. And if you catch yourself doing that, you really need to shift out of it. And it's not gonna be easy, but you need to get yourself some techniques in order to do that. And anything that makes you think or distracts you is helpful. I usually say, like, don't necessarily watch TV unless it's something you really, really know is gonna get your attention. Because otherwise you'll just be staring at the TV and you'll still be in the ra or reading a book. You know, it's gonna have to be Something that's gonna pull you out of your head. Don't fall for that temptation to let yourself go down the rabbit hole. I'm telling you, it's not a good place to be. There's nothing good down there. So when you feel like you're going down that road, you need to u turn it out as fast as you can. That's why this whole living with an addict or an alcoholic thing is so difficult, because basically it's overriding your instincts. It is literally like learning not to hit the brakes when you're skidding on ice. And I've heard that some people can do that. Like you northern people or you people that live out there in the snow. Us southern people, we have no ability to do that. Like, seriously, one snowflake we are slamming the brakes on because we're scared to death. But apparently that can be done if you train yourself. So it's that same concept. You're. You're sort of getting into your Russian rain and you decide what to do, even though you're in the midst of some sort of crisis. And that's going to help you decide what's the best decision for you. It's going to help you be better able to keep yourself safe and your family safe. Now, the next thing that you need to do is you need to make sure you have watched every video in my manipulation series. Because if you're still being manipulated, you're going to constantly be triggered in that part of your brain that we're trying to get to calm down. Because you're just going to be going to be fighting with yourself. You're going to be not trusting yourself. You're going to be confused. You're going to be upset with yourself because you can't control your emot. And so make sure you watch all of those manipulation videos. I'm going to put them right up here so you can click on them and watch them next.